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Distances between US cities and borders

# Libraries
library(tidyverse)
library(sf)
library(units)
library(USAboundaries)
library(rnaturalearth)
library(gghighlight)
library(ggrepel)
library(knitr)
library(plotly)


Most populated US Cities


Figure 1: Ten most populated cities in the US. An sf object was created from a dataframe containing all of the cities in the US. The ten most populated citiies were then extracted and plotted over an sf object of the continetal US sf object using ggplot.



US Cities furthest from the international border


Figure 2: US cities that are the furthest away from the international border. Distances were calculated by applying the st_distance() function on a Sf object containing all US cities and a unioned contentinal US sf object.


Cities furthest from US border
City State Distance to border
Dresden Kansas 1012.317
Herndon Kansas 1007.750
Hill City Kansas 1005.147
Atwood Kansas 1004.734
Jennings Kansas 1003.646



US Cities furthest from a state border

Figure 3: US cities that are the furthest away from a state border. Distances were calculated by applying the st_distance() function on a Sf object containing all US cities and the contentinal US sf object.



US Cities equidistant from Mexico and Canada


Figure 4: Highlighted US Cities which are equidistance between the Mexican and Candian borders. The cities which are equal distance between the Mexican and Canadian borders were calculated by taking the absolute difference between cities distances between the respective borders. Equidistant cities are highlighted by using the gghighlight function and the labeled cities are the five most populated cities in this region.



Cities furthest from Mexican border
City State Distance to Mexico border
Caribou Maine 3250.334
Presque Isle Maine 3234.570
Calais Maine 3134.348
Eastport Maine 3125.624
Old Town Maine 3048.366



Cities furthest from Canadian border
City State Distance to Canada border
Guadalupe Guerra Texas 2206.455
Sandoval Texas 2205.641
Fronton Texas 2204.784
Fronton Ranchettes Texas 2202.118
Evergreen Texas 2202.020



US Cities within 160km of international border




Figure 5: US cities which are within 160km of the international border. There are 12,283 cities found in this region with a total population of ~260 million people which equates to ~65% of the total US population. The labeled cities represent the most populated city in each state within the border zone.



States within 160 km of US Border
Border zone population Percent of total US population Number of cities
259935815 65.43979 12283